Much to my surprise there was a comics meet up but further research proved there was an anime AND a furry meet up but I only had time for one. Noah Kuttler, local creator, moderated between aspiring cartoonists, publishers and one sassy-ass reader.

Now this is kind of interesting. Avatar, publisher of some of the greatest writers in comics, like Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis and so on, is switching distributors from Diamond to…BOOM!?

Wait, BOOM! is a distributor? Not really, but they have their own distributor deal with Simon & Schuster for the US and HarperCollins for Canada. Avatar will be tagging along on BOOM!’s truck route for a unique partnership.

We had the chance to chat informally with several Avatar personnel about this move at C2E2 — and it’s definitely a good one for them. Moore and (to a lesser extent) Ellis are perennial bookstore bestsellers, so being able to hop on that bandwagon should definitely help their trade program. Although not noted by anyone, really, Avatar significantly slowed their trade collection release schedule over the last few months; this deal enables them to get it going again.

In a world of empty PR speak the follow pr from Wizard about a new Chairman of the Board reads like it chugged a couple of Rockstars then doused itself with FourLoko before shooting up some crank. Look at these action verbs: excited, accelerate, momentum, increase, velocity — just in ONE SENTENCE. That is really impressive. Whatever it is that Michael Mathews is going to do it is going to be WILD. And DIGITAL.

Via pr this morning, AdHouse publisher Chris Pitzer announced that the already much-lauded DUNCAN THE WONDER DOG by Adam Hines has won the first Lynd Ward Prize for graphic fiction. In a tweet, Drew Weing mentioned that his SET TO SEA had been named a Lynd Ward Prize Honor book. More honors may be announced when the actual PR goes out.

Named for the seminal woodcut artist who created some early American graphic novels, the prize is sponsored by the Penn State University Libraries and presented to the “best graphic novel, fiction or non-fiction, published in the previous calendar year by a living U.S. citizen or resident.”

DUNCAN THE WONDER DOG has already been nominated for the LA Times Book Prize, and been named one of publishers Weekly’s Best GNs of 2010. The book is currently sold out in print form but a second printing will be on sale imminently; a digital edition is currently for sale here.

Artist Colleen Doran has been talking about a secret graphic novel project she’s been working on for over a year, and it’s finally been announced: MANGAMAN, written by Barry Lyga, author of The Adventures of Fanboy and Gothgirl, and Boy Toy The tale is described as a “metafictive” tale of a character from a manga who falls through a “rip” into the real world and falls in love with a real girl. Doran talks about the project here:

Aaron Colter at Comics Alliance rounds up the latest news of t-shirt makers ripping off artists for ideas without paying them, including the granddaddy of them all, Todd Goldman, whose idea thievery is notorious — his huge David and Goliath novelty company has a long, well-documented track record for necoming “majorly inspired” by other artists’ ideas and then paying a little hush money when caught. We had a whole bunch of posts about Goldman’s past sins up here once, but his lawyer made us take them down. Let’s hope AOL has a few more resources to keep this story up, because he’s a total ______ and a ________ too.